


You’re All I Have Left (To Lose)

by ShadowsLament



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, descriptions of injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Skull Rock, Emma is determined to find Hook, who has been separated from their group and absent for days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You’re All I Have Left (To Lose)

**Author's Note:**

> This was just supposed to be a little thing; I still look at that word count and feel gobsmacked.

Emma skidded to a stop, her momentum rocking her one unsteady step closer to Hook. Slumped over the woven vines binding him, his head snapped up, turned. Dusk had fallen over his face: pale yellow yielding to dark blue on skin clouded by shallow cuts. She inhaled, stale air stuttering through her parted lips.

Swollen and framed by lashes spiked with dried blood, Hook’s eyes narrowed further. “I will not beg,” he said, voice scraping like sand over stone. “No matter your promise, or what you’ve come to—”

“Hook, it’s not—It’s me.” Emma jolted forward, sliding on loose stones and thin twigs, and dropped to her knees at his side. “Jesus,” she breathed. Her gaze skittered from his throat, rubbed raw and red by the coarse makeshift rope, down to his torn shirt, gaping open around long, precise gashes. Her hands shook, smudging her fingerprints into the dirt on either side of her thighs. She wiped the grit coating her palms off on her jeans, and reached for his restraints.

He jerked away, the rasp of the rope grating against his throat louder than the rough hiss torn from it. “ _Don’t_.”

Her hands hovering in the space between them, Emma stilled. 

“Leave your mark,” he spat, “but I’d see you wear your own face when you do.”

Frowning, Emma followed when he turned his head aside. “Hook.” Glaring off into the forest, his Adam’s apple dipped once. Twice. “Hook,” she repeated firmly. “This isn’t a trick.”

“Aye, you’ve mentioned that before.”

“How many times?”

His brow creased, pulling at the scab that split the trailing end of his eyebrow. “You’d know.”

Tucking her fingers into her palm, away from the slick line of blood sliding slowly down Hook’s temple, Emma said, “Tell me anyway.”

“It didn’t work that first night, nor the one that followed. Why you believe it might now, after…”

“After what?”

“I’m certain Swan’s got her lad by now,” he said, so quietly he might have been talking to himself. “She’ll be long gone from this wretched island, and far from your reach.” He turned his focus on her, and his stare burned. “So go on then, do what you came to.”

Hook firmed the line of his mouth and thrust his chin up, exposing marks like crescent moons sliced into the stubble on either side of his jaw.

Emma closed her eyes. She counted, silently, to ten: long enough to convince herself she hadn’t noticed how they both trembled. Lifting her lashes, she leaned forward, careful to keep a short distance between his body and hers, and willed him to see her resolve. His cool breath hit her cheek in short, rapid bursts that stung as sharply as his words had. 

“What I came to do is haul your leather-clad ass back to the Jolly Roger so we can—” Emma angled her head toward the forest behind her, listening for another rustle: large fronds being jostled out of the way. Grasping the hilt of the sword Hook had given her, she slid the blade out of its sheath. 

Hook pinned darkening eyes on the thick foliage, his lips curled in a silent snarl. Tense and defiant, his body blooming with bruises and scored by slits longer than thorns, he was still so beautiful he made Emma’s stomach clench. “We go together.” 

His eyes shot back to her face at that. She nodded once, trusting he’d understand. 

Crouched in front of Hook, Emma pivoted on her heels, the sword poised and steady at her side. She held her breath, close to choking on the excess air when the bracken parted. “David.”

“Emma, he wasn’t—”

“I know,” she said. “He’s here.”

Stepping into the clearing, David studied her expression. “Is he—”

“What is this?” It was a whisper, a low note of disbelief that had Emma tightening her grip on the hilt digging into her palm.

“I told you,” Emma said. “It’s not a trick.”

Hook blinked, looked over her shoulder at David before searching her eyes. “Emma?”

A sob balled up in her chest and rose, breaking through her lips as a hushed, shuddering laugh. “Yes.” Dropping the sword, she pushed her hair back, anchoring the strands behind her ear. “I’m here, so is David. We’re going to get you away from this place.”

“Henry?” Hook asked. “Is he—”

“He’s good,” Emma answered. “He’s safe on your ship.” She watched relief flit across Hook’s face, waited for the tension holding his shoulders stiff and straight to release, and glanced at David, sunk down on his haunches on the opposite side of Hook’s legs. Her father assessed the damage, a muscle leaping in his jaw. “Help me with the rope?”

David stood and drew his sword, circling the tree. The blade connected, hacking through the vines until they went slack. Emma gathered the loosened coil in one hand. Hook flinched away from her knuckles, brushing his chest. Startled, Emma yanked, hard, and threw the stained rope aside.

“His wrists are bound too,” David said, and crouched down at Hook’s back. “I’ll get—My god. Hook, what—“

Lowering his head, Hook sighed. “I imagine it’s a bit of a mess back there.”

“What does that mean?” Emma’s pulse throbbed, sped. “David?”

“A few scratches,” Hook answered instead. “How’re those other ropes coming, mate?”

“What?” David asked hoarsely, his gaze locked on Hook’s back.

“The rope.”

“The—Right.” Slicing through the bindings, David said, “We, ah, found your hook. From the look of it, you put up an impressive fight.”

Focused on rotating his wrist, on uncurling and bending his fingers, Hook’s silence pressed in around Emma like rising water.

“All right,” she said, keeping her tone light. “Let’s get you on your feet.”

“Emma,” David began, “I don’t think—”

“It’s fine, we can manage.” She scooted closer to Hook and reached for his arm to loop it around her neck. He reared back, a spasm of pain contorting his face. “Hey—”

“There’s no need,” Hook panted. Braced against the tree trunk, he inched his way up, gritting his teeth. He stood, swaying, in front of her. “Best not…keep your boy…waiting.”

Hook took a small step and blanched white, the bruises on his face and throat stark marks of vibrant color. His eyes slipped shut as his knees buckled.

“Hook!”

David sprang forward, grunting as he bent his legs, taking the brunt of Hook’s weight on his shoulders and chest. “I’ve got him.”

Openmouthed, Emma stared, unblinking, at Hook’s back. At his shredded shirt. At the whip-long lines layered one over another across his skin. At the blood, dried and glistening. “Scratches.” Her chin quivering, Emma forced her gaze up. “He said—”

“I know,” David said quietly, watching her with something like sorrow in his eyes. “Regina…Gold. I will make _sure_ one of them heals him. As soon as we get back to the ship, Emma, I swear.” Carefully hefting Hook over his shoulder, David wrapped his arms around Hook’s legs. “Grab your sword.”

Swiping at her cheeks, Emma ignored the moisture on the heel of her hand and retrieved the sword. She moved around David, taking the lead. “Let’s go.”

Fronds fell at her feet, severed across the seam or lopped off at the stem. She slapped at low hanging vines, shoving them out of the way, and listened for David’s heavy footsteps behind her. She kept walking, gauging the distance they covered by the slight huffs and hitches in David’s breathing, coming quicker the farther they went. She thought, on a loop, about the splinters of bark embedded in the wounds on Hook’s back. How he’d jerked away from her touch, driving the slivers of wood deeper. 

“Pan made him think I was there,” she blurted out. “I don’t know how; if it was a drug, or magic. It doesn’t matter.” She lashed out with her sword. “He looked like me, and gave Hook hope, and I think he…he—”

“When we get back,” David rasped, “keep the box as far away from me as possible.”

Clearing her throat, Emma brushed at the wet trail tracking along her jawline. “We can’t open it without Gold’s help.”

“So we give him a reason to do exactly that.”

Emma nodded, distracted by the bright chirping of birds she’d yet to see and, beneath that deceptively cheerful soundtrack, the soft rush of waves pushing onto shore. She picked up her pace. “Almost there.”

“Thankfully,” David muttered. “He weighs a bloody ton.”

Groaning, Emma plunged through the ferns that marked the forest’s edge. “You did not.”

“Tell him, and I will ground you.”

“You could try.” Dampened sand squelched beneath Emma’s boots, clinging to the soles and littering the gangway with compacted clumps. “Where is everyone?”

“Here,” Mary Margaret answered, rushing from the stern, Henry and Neal on her heels. “Did you find him?”

“A little help,” David said, staggering onto the deck.

Mary Margaret gasped. She caught Henry’s shoulder, holding him back, and looked at Emma. “Is he--”

“He’s alive.” Emma clenched her hands. “And I’m going to make sure he doesn’t feel any of--That he’s not in pain when he wakes up. Where’s Regina? Gold?”

“Below,” Neal answered, moving to take Hook from David’s arms. “Here, give him to--”

“No,” David said, shaking his head. “Just hold his legs. Carefully.”

“Henry,” Emma said, angling her body and blocking his view of David and Neal gently maneuvering Hook’s battered form. “Do me a favor and get Regina. Do you know where Hook’s cabin is?”

“Of course. Dad’s been showing me around,” Henry explained. “We’ll meet you there.”

“Thanks, kid.” He jogged to the ladder, brown hair ruffling in the wafting breeze, and disappeared. Emma cut her stare to David, her stomach fluttering. “Ready?”

White-knuckled, her father’s hands rested lightly on Hook’s collarbones, his long fingers tucked away from the abrasion strung like a necklace around Hook’s throat. Tightening his arms, wound under and around Hook’s, David nodded at Neal. “Go, but slowly.” 

Mary Margaret fell in at Emma’s side, keeping pace as they strode to the ladder after David and Neal. “He’s going to be fine, you know.”

“I know,” Emma said, and swallowed. “It’s just…”

“Just?” Mary Margaret prompted.

Emma felt warmth at her back: Mary Margaret’s hand, suspended inches from where Emma’s spine curved. Ducking forward, she picked her way down the ladder, one narrow step after another. “How many bottles of rum do you think he has stashed in his cabin?”

“I’m not sure,” Mary Margaret said after a pregnant pause. “You didn’t notice any—”

Emma’s brow rose, creased. “When would I have?”

“Well, I just thought—”

“He was never even in there, not once.” The fluttering in Emma’s stomach increased, knotting muscle, making her feel nauseated. “Except for when he gave me Neal’s sword, and then the thing with the mermaid, Hook never left the wheel.”

“He had to get us here—”

“And that’s exactly what he did,” Emma exclaimed. “He got us here, and he kept David from dying. He told us about Neal, and followed me into Dark Hollow, and he—“

“Emma.” Mary Margaret reached out, gripped Emma’s biceps. “Take a deep breath.”

Shrugging off her mother’s hands, Emma stepped back. “I’ll breathe when—”

“Henry tells me the pirate’s been hurt,” Regina said, approaching with her arms crossed.

“That’s right.” David stepped out of Hook’s cabin. “And you’re going to heal him.”

Her eyebrow arched sharply, Regina said, “Is that so.”

David’s chest rose, the streaks of darkly glistening blood on his shirt stretching, seeping into a web of fine wrinkles. “If it’s too much for you, I’ll get Gold.”

“And if you think he’ll lift a finger to—”

“He will,” Neal said from the doorway. “Pretty sure I can make a convincing case for it.”

“He won’t have to.” Henry’s solemn eyes roamed over Emma’s face for a long moment before turning up, focusing on Regina. “Please, mom?”

Regina considered Henry, her shoulders dropping by degrees. “Fine.”

“He’s in here,” David said, and backed into the cabin.

Shuffling behind Regina, Henry stopped shy of the door. He turned to Emma. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Yeah, I am,” she said. “But it’s gonna be a tight fit in there. Maybe you could stay out here? With Neal and Mary Margaret?”

“Are you sure you don’t want us with you?”

Her smile tremulous, threatening to slip, Emma said, “I’m sure, kid. But…thanks.”

“Remember,” Mary Margaret murmured. “Hook’s going to be _just_ fine.”

“If you change your mind,” Neal added, “we’ll be nearby.”

Quickly traversing the path they made for her, Emma kept her head down, sneaking quick glances at each of them: Concern pursed Mary Margaret’s lips; Henry’s eyes were bright, a beacon of quiet belief. Neal’s face was a mask of lines, shifting and smoothing, trying to settle on a convincing lie. Inhaling, Emma slipped into Hook’s cabin, shut the door.

The ship swayed; the wood groaned and popped, like it had the night Hook found her preparing for a fight. Emma’s hands fisted as the lanterns overhead gently swung, casting out a faint light that ebbed and flowed over the bed. Over Hook: the contusions and lacerations. Signs of a war. “What are you waiting for?”

“This isn’t _hurt_ ,” Regina murmured. “He was tortured.”

“For days.” David straightened away from the bulkhead to stand next to Emma, his arm brushing hers with deliberate pressure. “A steep price to pay for helping us get Henry back.”

“I agreed to heal him already, Charming. The reminder is hardly necessary.”

“So why aren’t you doing it?” Emma bit out. “Why are you just standing there?”

Regina sneered. “Why haven’t you even tried, Savior?” 

“If you’ve already agreed,” Emma snapped, “just do it, Regina.”

Several seconds passed, each longer than the one that came before, as Regina’s dark stare pinned Emma in place. “I can make him comfortable,” she said finally. “Make the bruises fade, the cuts all but disappear.”

David exhaled. “That’s good. That’s--”

“I can’t heal him.”

“You just said--”

“He’ll wake up,” Regina interrupted David, holding Emma’s eyes, “and remember everything Pan did.”

Hook’s still hand rested near the edge of the bed, palm up and open. Emma’s fingers twitched, inches away. Shoving her hands in her pockets, she said, “We’ll deal with it.”

“You say that now,” Regina muttered, raising her arms, “but it’s not going to be easy.”

“It never is.” David shifted, let his weight press gently against Emma’s side. “Good thing for him we’re not the type to cut and run.”

Unaware of closing her eyes, Emma briefly leaned into her father, and his sigh, so near her ear, was louder for the darkness. Pulling away, she lifted her lashes to see Regina’s hands poised above Hook, her concentration absolute. 

“There,” Regina said. “It’s done. Now, I’d like to get back to my--”

David looked up from Hook as Regina moved toward the door. “Shouldn’t he be waking up?” 

“As you so needlessly pointed out, he was tortured for days. Let the man rest.”

When the door closed behind Regina, sealing the others and their questions out, Emma staggered back to the bulkhead. She slid down to the floor and drew her legs up, pulling her knees to her chest. 

“Do you want to be--”

She shook her head.

David hesitated, studying her face. Three strides later he was at her side, sliding down to sit with his legs stretched out and his folded hands resting on his stomach. 

Silence unwound like time, and Emma let it. Dropping her forehead to her crossed arms, the boot lace tied around her wrist grazed her temple. Her muscles quivered; David had to feel it, how she shook. He held still and stayed quiet, and she thought she understood, then, what it cost him. 

“Emma?” 

Her head shot up, air leaving her lungs in a rush. “Here.” Scrambling up from the floor, Emma lurched forward. “I’m here, Hook.”

Hook’s brow pinched, confusion deepening the lines fanned out at the corners of his blinking eyes. “This--I’m on the Jolly Roger?”

“Yeah,” Emma breathed. “David carried you back.”

The lines dug deeper as Hook shifted to look at David, standing several paces behind Emma. “I owe you thanks.”

“You owe me nothing,” David said, stepping up to the bed. He smiled. “I’m glad you’re back with us, Jones. Now I think it’s time I left you in my daughter’s capable hands.” He turned a softer smile on Emma. “I’ll update the others. It may take awhile.”

Emma didn’t move when David leaned in, tentatively. She didn’t evade his kiss, light as a summer breeze against her forehead. She didn’t stop him at the door with a thank you of her own, but inclined her head when he glanced at her before tugging it shut.

“I’ve missed a bit, have I?”

“Not really,” Emma answered. “Are you--How do you feel?”

Digging an elbow into the mattress, Hook gingerly pushed until he sat slouched against the pillows. “As though I’d been pushed from Dead Man’s Peak.”

Beneath his tattered clothing, the bruising had receded. The gashes were gone, leaving faint scars in their wake. Against the instinct to close her eyes, Emma sought out each mark, quickly losing count. The question she kept coming back to, that circled in her mind, preying on what she imagined might be true, burst out. “Why?”

Rubbing his nape, Hook shrugged. “It’s of little consequence now.”

“Not to me,” she said. “You never should have--”

“I met Pan, after the blast rocked the island,” Hook said wearily. “One glance and I knew he had taken possession of Henry’s heart.”

“You tried to take it back,” Emma realized aloud. 

“Without success, as you well know.”

Anger pushed through her veins like blood. “What were you thinking? Taking him on alone?”

“I thought you must have been injured, and badly,” Hook said in a low, brittle voice. “For Pan to have your lad’s heart beating in his chest.”

“I wasn’t,” Emma said, her tone sharpened by the maelstrom of emotion surging through her. “None of us were. We could have--”

“Did I bloody well know that then?” 

Emma stood straighter, pulled up by his words, raw and bleak, and still ricocheting between them.

Hook sighed. “It was not my intent to--”

“No,” Emma said. “You’re right. You didn’t know what happened, because you did what I needed you to, and stayed behind. If you hadn’t--”

“Stay clear of that path,” Hook said. “It leads nowhere either of us wish to be.” He leaned his head back, wincing as he rolled his shoulders. “Besides, what’s done is done. You’ll soon be free of Neverland, and with your boy at your side.”

After a beat, Emma asked, "Where will you be?"

Hook regarded her, the distance she maintained, with a shuttered expression. "Perhaps you should tell me, love."

Emma sensed questions like cracking ice, buried beneath his weighted statement. “I…” She licked her dry lips and looked at his hand, thought of lacing their fingers together. Of holding on. "I wanted to touch you.” Moisture blurring her focus, Emma blinked. “I _want_ to touch you,” she whispered, “but when I tried, before, you couldn't stand it. If you still can't, I--" Furiously wiping at the tears breaking loose of her lashes, Emma shook her head.

“Emma.” His soft voice drew her head around. “I’ve wanted little more than that, your hands on me, wherever you wished to let them linger, from very nearly the start.”

“And now, after--”

“That desire stands, unchanged,” Hook said. “Pan had his game. That first night, you were all that was on my mind. I played into his hand.”

“No,” Emma flatly denied. “What happened, all of it, is on Pan.”

“Aye, I merely made it easier for him. I wanted to see your face once more, and there you were. I thought perhaps--But, Emma, he could never make me believe.”

Emma frowned. “I came back for you. You had to know I would.”

“I held that hope through every moment that passed.”

The deep breath Emma took jerked in her lungs; her chest closed around the air she needed suddenly, desperately, as words crowded in her throat and gathered on her tongue, where she held them back. She stared at Hook, who watched her with fathomless, dark blue eyes, and tried to match her breathing with his: shallow but even, and ceaseless. When she was sure her voice would hold, Emma said, “But…if you didn’t believe we’d stay and find you--”

“I never believed you’d hurt me, not like that.” Hook’s gaze hardened. His jaw clenched, deliberately releasing a second later. “If Pan meant to break me, he chose his weapon poorly.”

Her thoughts scattered, chasing after the response that would explain why her heartbeat found its rhythm only to lose it again each time Hook spoke. Toying with the folds in the worn-thin sheet, Emma said, “Yeah, well, if that was the plan, he never stood a chance. You’re a survivor.”

“That I am,” Hook agreed. “Now more than ever, it would seem.”

“Look,” she said, her cheeks flushed. “I know you said you wanted to win my—”

“Your heart, aye, and there I must ask for forgiveness. I misspoke,” he said, holding up a staying hand when a jolt of shock rocked her back on her heels. “It’s more than even that I’m after. I want your heart, Emma, and all else you never dared give to anyone, not even your Neal.”

Emma didn’t hesitate. “He’s not mine.” When Hook simply looked at her, his eyebrow high and curved, she insisted, “He’s not.”

“His opinion may differ, you realize.”

“Maybe it did,” she conceded with a shrug. 

“Did.” Abruptly taken with the state of his wrecked shirt, Hook asked, “Would that suggest he’s been given reason to alter it?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Emma answered, truthfully. “But Neal’s not blind, and you’re not the only one I’ve felt watching me.” 

“About that, I’d offer apology except--”

“I’m not asking you to.”

Hook’s lips twitched. “And you’d know it for a lie if I did.”

A huffed laugh slipped out. Emma’s eyes skidded to the corner of the cabin, where the faint sound seemed to echo. She tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth and, between one blink and the next, eased down. Perched on the edge of the compressed mattress, she rubbed her hands down her thighs to her knees, and back again.

“I never took you for the timid kind, unsure of what to do in a man’s bed.”

Shadows had crowded in his eyes not long after he’d opened them, but as he waited for her to respond, his body relaxed, the heat of him like a bonfire burning on all sides of her, she saw a spark of light break through.

Smirking, Emma said, “Don’t change your mind on my account.”

“Well, but now I may require a demonstration. When you’re feeling up to it, of course.”

Emma grinned, unable to resist. “You couldn’t handle it.”

“No,” he agreed, his smile spreading slowly. “I'd rather you offer me that pleasure." Shifting forward, Hook lifted his gaze from Emma’s lips to her eyes, and murmured, "You needn't worry though, love. As good as I get, I give back tenfold. When we take each other, and we will, your pleasure will also be mine."

Emma’s chest rose and fell, too quick to catch her breath. “Sounds like fun.”

“A promise I intend to keep.” Hook slid his hand up the mattress until his fingertips met Emma’s. “When you’re of a mind to let me.”

“Home first.” Emma slipped her fingers through his, holding on. “But after that? I don’t know.” Smiling, she shrugged. “Maybe dreams do come true.”


End file.
